Feminism and Language

Submitted By: Submitted To:

Anand Singh Mr. Pradeep Barman

Roll No. 31 (Assistant Professor)

English project

14th October, 2019

Hidayatullah National Law

University, Atal Nagar (C.G.)
 Declaration

I, Anand singh hereby declare that, this project entitled, ‘Feminism and Language’

submitted to Hidayatullah National Law University (Atal Nagar), is record of an original

work done by me under the guidance of Mr. Pradeep Barman, Assistant Professor of English,

H.N.L.U., Atal Nagar and that no part of this work has been plagiarized without citations.

Name – Anand Singh

Date : 14-10-2019
 Acknowledgements

I, Anand Singh, would like to humbly present this project to Mr. Pradeep Barman. I would

first of all like to express my most sincere gratitude to Mr. Pradeep Barman for his

encouragement and guidance regarding several aspects of this project. I am thankful for

being given the opportunity of doing a project on ‘Feminism and Language.’

I am thankful to the IT lab assistants and the library staffs for facilitating my research by

helping me obtain the required material that was so integral to my completing this project.

I am thankful to my parents for their constant support and loving encouragement.

Last but definitely not the least; I am thankful to my seniors for all their support, tips and

valuable advice whenever needed. I hereby present this project with a humble heart.

Name- Anand Singh

Semester-I

Section-C

Roll No.- 31
 Table of Contents

 Declaration.....................................................................................................................I

 Acknowledgements.......................................................................................................II

 Abstract........................................................................................................................IV

 Introduction...................................................................................................................1

 History of Censorship in Indian Media.........................................................................3

 Censorship in Indian Television.....................................................................................4

 Central Board of Film Certification..............................................................................6

 Censorship in the Indian Internet..................................................................................8

 Indian Censorship in Comparison with Global Society................................................9

 Conclusion....................................................................................................................12

 References....................................................................................................................14
 INTRODUCTION

Feminist philosophy of language has come a long way in a very short time period. Initially, most
work in the area was critical, calling for changes either to language itself or to philosophy of
language. More recently, however, the dynamic has changed, with the advent of several major
positive research programmes within philosophy of language.

The ongoing feminist movement acknowledges language as a “powerful instrument of

patriarchy”. The goals set for linguistic reform aim to achieve linguistic equality of the sexes.
The word “chairman” is used to describe all people holding the position, including women. This
is an example of a linguistic issue that feminists seek to reform. Occupational nomenclature
reflects gender bias when “professional nomenclature used in employment-related contexts
displays bias in favour of men leading to women's inferiority in this area.” The invisibility of
women is a linguistic feminist issue because when encountering sentences predominantly using
male pronouns, listeners are more likely to think of men before women and therefore women get
overlooked.

The main focus of feminist language reform is to acknowledge the often unconscious ways that
language both silences and emphasizes gender in negative ways. In some languages it is clear
with gendered nouns how some words are gendered to associate those words with maleness of
femaleness. Feminist Philosophers argue that English, a non-gendered language, still has the
need for Language Reform.

Feminist language theory also focuses on when words or phrases emphasize a break in gender
norms. Clear examples of this are words like Lady Doctor or Manageress. These are positions of
power that are typically held by men. Therefore, when a woman holds them, they need a new
title to emphasize their break of social norm. Feminist language reform seeks to remove words
like this because they help to sustain unhealthy gender norms.
 OBJECTIVES

1. To know the effect of feminist language on the society.

2. To understand the effect of feminist language reform on the language.
3. To know the changes made in language which is used to describe gender people, activities and
ideas of an individual.
4. To know the common features of feminist language.
5. To understand how language grows with the growth of gender neutral society.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

The project is descriptive and analytical in nature. It tries to explain the feminism on the
language all around the globe. Further, the project also enunciates the language of feminism and
it’s impact on society.

This study is done with the help of secondary data. This secondary information has been obtained
from published sources such as books, journals, newspapers, official websites and government
publication.
 CHAPTER 1: PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE – FALSE
GENDER NEUTRALITY

There has been a great deal of feminist concern over the supposedly gender-neutral use of terms
like ‘he’ and ‘man’. It is commonly said that these terms have both gender-specific meanings, as
in sentences (1) and (2), and gender-neutral ones, as in sentences (3) and (4).

1. He drank the wine.

2. A man went into a bar.

3. When a student comes into the room, he should pick up a handout.

4. Man is a primate.

Feminists, however, have pointed out that even the supposed gender-neutral meanings of these
terms are not really gender-neutral. Janice Moulton (1981) and Adele Mercier (1995) provide
examples in which there is no doubt that a gender-neutral meaning is intended, but this meaning
seems unavailable. As a result, the sentences seem ill-formed:

5. Man has two sexes; some men are female.

6. Man breastfeeds his young.

We are, then, making a classificatory error if we claim that ‘man’ and ‘he’ are gender-neutral
terms. In order to avoid such a classificatory error, we need to do more careful work on what the
meanings of these terms actually are. Perhaps the meaning of ‘he’ that has been called ‘gender-
neutral’ is not really gender-neutral, but something much more complex. Mercier suggests, for
example, that we should understand the ‘gender-neutral’ use of ‘man’ as referring to either (a) a
person or persons of unknown sex; or (b) males or a combination of males and females. This
explains why ‘men’ in (5) and ‘man’ in (6) are anomalous: these terms are being used to refer
exclusively to persons known to be female.

The supposed ‘gender-neutral’ meaning of these terms, then, is not truly gender neutral. But, on
its own, this does not show that there is a problem with those uses that have traditionally been
classified as gender-neutral, as in sentences (3) and (4). Discovering that we have misclassified
an adjective as an adverb would not show anything wrong with actual uses of the term in
question. Further reasons are needed in order to object to the use that is made of these terms.

Feminist concerns, however, go beyond mere classificatory ones. Feminists have also argued
that terms like ‘he’ and ‘man’ contribute to making women invisible—that is, to obscuring
women’s importance, and distracting attention from their existence. Fighting the invisibility
of women is an important feminist project in many areas, and language that makes one less
likely to think of women clearly contributes to this invisibility. There is good
psycholinguistic evidence that those who encounter sentences like (3) and (4) using the terms
‘he’ and ‘man’ think more readily of males than of females. If this is right, then the use of
these words can be seen as contributing to the invisibility of women. This gives feminists a
good reason to object to the ‘gender-neutral’ use of these terms.

If one’s only worry concerned the obscuring of women’s presence, however, it would be difficult
to object to certain other terms to which feminists do commonly object: gender-specific
occupational terms like ‘manageress’ or ‘lady doctor’. These terms certainly do not contribute to
the invisibility of women. Instead, they call attention to the presence of women. Moreover, they
call attention to women’s presence in positions of authority—doctor and manager. Nonetheless,
most feminists who think about language find these terms objectionable.

The clearest reason for objecting to ‘manageress’ and ‘lady doctor’ is that the use of these
terms seems premised on the idea that maleness is the norm, and that women filling these
jobs are somehow deviant versions of doctors and managers. This is also a key objection to
the use of ‘he’ and ‘man’.

Problems like those we have seen so far are relatively easy to discern. Moreover, it may
seem that they would be relatively easy to correct—new terms can be invented, or alternative
words can be used. Much feminist effort has been devoted to this endeavour, and a huge
variety of reforms have been proposed.

 One especially successful reform effort has been the increasingly accepted singular use of
the third-person gender-neutral pronoun ‘they’ (in place of ‘he’) as in the sentence below:
Somebody left their sweater behind.
Due to feminist work on the effects of ‘gender-neutral’ use of ‘he’, even prescriptive
grammarians are now becoming more accepting of ‘they’. In very recent years, it is also
becoming increasingly widespread to use ‘they’ as one’s chosen personal pronoun, or, less
frequently, to use another gender-neutral option such as ‘ze’.
 CHAPTER 2: MALENESS OF LANGUAGE

Some feminists argue that English is, in some quite general sense, male. One thing that is meant
by this is that English can be said to be male in a manner similar to that in which particular terms
can be said to be male by encoding a male worldview, by helping to subordinate women or to
render them invisible, or by taking males as the norm. 

This widespread encoding of male bias in language is, according to theorists like Spender, just
what we should expect. Males have had far more power in society, and this, she claims has
included the power to enforce, through language, their view of the world. Moreover, she argues,
this has served to enhance their power.

There is sexism in language, it does enhance the position of males, and males have had control

over the production of cultural forms.

According to theorists like Spender, men’s ability to control language gives them great power
indeed. We have already seen ways in which what one might call the maleness of language
contributes to the invisibility of women (with respect to words like ‘he’ and ‘man’). If one takes
the maleness of language to go beyond a few specific terms, one will take language’s power to
make women invisible to be even stronger. We have also seen ways that what might be called
maleness can make it more difficult for women to express themselves. Where we lack words for
important female experiences, like sexual harassment, women will find it more difficult to
describe key elements of their existence.

If one takes such problems to go beyond selected particular terms, and to infect language as a
whole, it is natural to suppose that women are to a large degree silenced unable to accurately
articulate key elements of their lives, and unable to communicate important aspects of their
thoughts.

In general, the solution suggested is not to attempt to create a neutral language that can
accurately capture reality in itself, a goal they would take to be nonsense. Instead, we must aim
to create a new reality more congenial to women. Some feminists have argued that the only way
to achieve this is for women to create their own language, either by redefining terms already in
use, or by inventing a new language with new words and new rules. Only in this way, they
suggest, will women be able to break free from the constraints of male language and male
thought, to articulate a competing vision for the world, and to work toward it.

Nonetheless, it does seem right to notice that problems with specific terms can render it more
difficult for women to communicate about important elements of their lives, and probably also
more difficult to reflect upon these elements. These difficulties could perhaps be described as
partial silencing, partial constraint of thought.

If the criticisms above are right, then women certainly do not need to create their own language.
Many welcome this conclusion, worried that a women’s language would doom women’s
thoughts to marginality and impede feminist progress.
 CHAPTER 3: POSITIVE RESEARCH PROGRAMMES IN
PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE

Things have changed a great deal in recent years, and it is now widely accepted that philosophy
of language has something to offer feminists, and even (though less widely) that feminists have
something to offer philosophy of language. Feminist philosophy of language is now becoming a
well-established area of the larger field, with several substantial positive research programmes.

1. ON THE MEANING OF WOMAN-

In her ground-breaking paper “Gender and Race: (What) Are They? (What) Do We Want Them
To Be?” (2000b), Haslanger aims to provide an account of the nature of gender, as well as an
account of the meaning of ‘woman’. She assumes the classical distinction between sex and
gender, where sex is supposed to refer to biological or anatomical properties distinguishing
males from females (although as she argues, this distinction is flexible and permeated by social
and political factors too), and gender is supposed to refer to social or cultural factors
distinguishing men from women (see the entry on feminist perspectives on sex and gender).

One of the main virtues of Haslanger’s article is that she makes explicit the methodological
approach that she endorses, to wit: she famously distinguishes between a descriptive project,
which aims to reveal the concept that we actually use or the property that we actually track with
our usage of the term, and an analytical project (or an ameliorative project, as she calls it in
Haslanger 2006), which aims to reveal the concept that we should use or the meaning that we
should associate to the corresponding term, given our purposes and aims in that inquiry.

 As she makes clear, she is following the analytical or ameliorative approach, with the
explicit aim of providing an account of the meaning of ‘gender’ and ‘woman’ that could be a
useful tool in order to fight sexism and help to achieve social justice. With this purpose in
mind, she comes up with the following definition of the term ‘ woman’, as one particular type
of gender:
“S is a woman if S is systematically subordinated along some dimension (economic, political,
legal, social, etc.) and S is “marked” as a target for this treatment by observed or imagined bodily
features presumed to be evidence of a female’s biological role in reproduction.”

As we can see, the main idea of Haslanger’s account is that gender is a hierarchical social
structure, where some members are situated in a position of privilege and some other members
are situated in a position of subordination along social, economic, political, legal, or cultural
dimensions, in virtue of their real or imagined biological role in reproduction. And more
particularly, being a woman corresponds to occupying a specific position of subordination with
respect to this social structure, due to one’s perceived or imagined biologically female bodily
features.

Haslanger’s proposal gave rise to a rich debate about the virtues of an ameliorative approach, and
the advantages and problems of this particular account. For instance, Saul (2006) argued that this
proposed usage of the term ‘woman’ could have some problematic consequences, such as
feminists having to advocate for the eradication of women, since feminists advocate for the
eradication of the subordination of people in terms of their biological role in reproduction. For
this reason, Saul argued, this might not be the most advantageous way of using the term
‘woman’. In addition, Saul argued that the folk or ordinary concept of ‘woman’ does not really
distinguish between sex as a biological feature and gender as a social or cultural feature.

More recently, several feminists have argued that an account of ‘woman’ along the lines of
Haslanger’s proposal might fail to do justice to the aims of trans women, which should be central
for the purposes of feminism. For example, Saul (2012) argues that neither standard sex-based
accounts nor standard gender-based accounts are automatically going to be inclusive of trans
women, since (at least some) trans women could arguably turn out to be excluded from the
extension of the term ‘woman’ when defined in terms of biological features, or in terms of
certain social and cultural factors that are usually attributed to biologically female individuals.
Saul put forward a possible alternative view, namely, a contextualist view of the meaning of
‘woman’, as follows:
X is a woman is true in a context C if X is human and relevantly similar (according to the
standards at work in C) to most of those possessing all of the biological markers of female
sex.

According to this account, an individual will fall under the extension of ‘woman’ in a certain
context when she is sufficiently similar to those who are biologically female, given the
standards of similarity that are relevant in such context, where these standards can vary from
context to context.

In this section we have focused on semantic accounts of the meaning of ‘woman’, although

recently there has also been an explosion of work about the related questions of
the metaphysics of gender as a social class, and biological sex as a contested category. Some of
these discussions have implications for the meanings of the corresponding terms of ‘woman’ and
‘female’. For example, Saray Ayala and Nadya Vasilyeva (2015) provide an account of
biological sex in terms of extended, flexible biological features, where which features count for
being male or female can change from context to context, depending on our aims and purposes,
and where those extended biological features can be taken to incorporate features of the
environment, artificial bodily features, and so on.

2. AMELIORATIVE PROJECTS AND CONCEPTUAL

ENGINEERING-
the notion of an ameliorative project in philosophy is not new, but in our view the impetus that
this methodological approach in philosophy has experienced recently owes much to the centrality
that this notion has played in recent developments in philosophy of gender and race over the last
two decades.

As ameliorative projects are becoming more common in mainstream analytic philosophy, they
have given rise to a careful examination of the methodological foundations and the metaphysical,
semantic and epistemic aspects of the ameliorative approach, as well as its moral and political
implications. Alexis Burgess and David Plunkett (2013) have usefully surveyed these and related
issues pertaining to ameliorative projects in philosophy, and have coined a new label: conceptual
ethics. 
They intend this new term to refer to the philosophical reflection about the terms and concepts
that we ought to use in different areas, given our best normative reasoning, as well as the
methodological and philosophical issues to which these projects give rise. Examples include the
nature of the values and normative considerations that should guide our choice of terms and
concepts, as well as semantic questions about the nature and possibility of conceptual change and
conceptual revision, among many others. One of the advantages of having this new label is that
discussions on these normative issues about our talk and thought that were formerly scattered can
now be more unified and more systematic.

Another term that is becoming prominent in this area is that of conceptual engineering, which is
supposed to refer to ameliorative projects that aim to revise our current concepts and engineer
new concepts that can better serve our main purposes. This term originates from discussions
about Carnap’s methodological insights (see for instance French 2015 for a useful overview), but
is now being used in a more general, encompassing sense. Several philosophers have recently
argued that we could understand many traditional debates in philosophy as debates in conceptual
ethics or conceptual engineering (see for instance Floridi 2011 and Plunkett 2015).
 CONCLUSION

A feminist linguistic theory, is a theory that links language with sex in two ways: it spells out the
connection on the one hand between language and gender identity, and on the other hand
between language and women's oppression.

If we are to have useful dialogue, therefore, all feminist linguistic theories must make it clear
where they stand on four basic questions. First, what are we talking about when we talk about
language? Secondly, what do we mean by women's language (or indeed men's language): how is
the link between language and gender to be understood? Thirdly, what is the relation of language
to reality? Fourthly, what is the relation of language to disadvantage, particularly (but not
exclusively) in the case of women?

Definite answers to these four questions would provide a basis both for fruitful debate amongst
differing theoretical tendencies, and for the development of a feminist practice in speech and
writing. The remainder of the conclusion will therefore be devoted to examining the questions in
more detail.